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Full-Text Articles in Law

Women As Perpetrators: Does Motherhood Have A Reformative Effect On Prostitution? , Lynne Marie Kohm Jan 2006

Women As Perpetrators: Does Motherhood Have A Reformative Effect On Prostitution? , Lynne Marie Kohm

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article explores whether motherhood may have any restorative effect on prostitution. Section I provides an overview of the crime of prostitution. It analyzes the underlying themes of autonomy, power, authority, and control, and considers whether prostitution is an example of the ultimate loss of these qualities, or an exercise of complete freedom and liberty in autonomy. Section II discusses how motherhood affects the life of a prostitute. It analyzes current social science research and studies and explores maternal responsibilities in terms of potential work interruption, new personal roles, and anxieties associated with the work/family/crime triad. It also considers the …


Sex Before Violence: Girls, Dating Violence, And (Perceived) Sexual Autonomy, Cheryl Hanna Jan 2006

Sex Before Violence: Girls, Dating Violence, And (Perceived) Sexual Autonomy, Cheryl Hanna

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article explores the phenomenon of girl violence by examining teen dating violence and girls' experiences with intimate abuse both as victims and as perpetrators. While there is a tendency to view women's experiences as victims of violence as separate and distinct from their experiences as victims of violence, the two phenomena are interrelated. A girl's violent victimization can lead her to victimize someone else, just as her own violence can lead her to violent victimization. These conversations about young women and sexual behavior are especially important for lawyers and advocates. While the implementation of legal strategies such as civil …


The Construction Of Pregnant Drug-Using Women As Criminal Perpetrators, Nancy D. Campbell Jan 2006

The Construction Of Pregnant Drug-Using Women As Criminal Perpetrators, Nancy D. Campbell

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Despite clear lack of intent to harm those whom they carry, drug-using pregnant women have been constructed de facto criminal perpetrators. However, drug use falls short of being prima facie evidence of intent to harm, particularly in social circumstances where drug-using economics are endemic. The cases in this article signal the limits of tolerance and the increasingly conditional nature of public welfare provision by raising the specter of a generation of urban mothers - and grandmothers - unable to care for their kids. These cases also reflect the policy-making role into which hospitals and the courts have stepped in the …


Mad Women And Desperate Girls: Infanticide And Child Murder In Law And Myth, Elizabeth Rapaport Jan 2006

Mad Women And Desperate Girls: Infanticide And Child Murder In Law And Myth, Elizabeth Rapaport

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article first offers a comparison between the stereotype dominated understanding of infanticide and child homicide in the United States and the statistical landscape it obscures. It then turns to the history of the crime of infanticide, a history which confirms that a fascination with deviant women as long dominated the story of infanticide. The article concludes with the exploration of the "Good Mother Defense." That exploration reveals the extent to which the fate of a woman tried for child homicide hinges on whether the jury sees her as a good mother, rather than on the prosecutors' ability to prove …


Sexual Abuse Of Women In United States Prisons: A Modern Corollary Of Slavery, Brenda V. Smith Jan 2006

Sexual Abuse Of Women In United States Prisons: A Modern Corollary Of Slavery, Brenda V. Smith

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This paper addresses the sexual abuse of women in custody as a more contemporary manifestation of slavery. Part II situates the sexual abuse of women in custody and women slaves in their historical context. Part II also charts the creation of the first penitentiaries in the United States and the "Reform Movement," led by Quaker women who were also involved in the abolition movement, and later in the suffrage movement. It further examines the impact that women's entry into male prisons as workers in the 1970s and 1980s - pursuant to Title VII - had on the sexual abuse of …


Mother Of Atrocities: Pauline Nyiramasuhuko's Role In The Rwandan Genocide, Carrie Sperling Jan 2006

Mother Of Atrocities: Pauline Nyiramasuhuko's Role In The Rwandan Genocide, Carrie Sperling

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article describes Pauline Nyiramasuhuko's role in the Rwandan genocide and her case before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). It explores a woman's ability to be equally involved in atrocities by exploring Pauline's case. Her case challenges the myth than women, by their nature, are incapable of being warriors, and that somehow their roles as women and mothers prohibit them from planning or participating in depraved violence.


Revisiting Anna Moscowitz's Kross's Critique Of New York City's Women's Court: The Continued Problem Of Solving The "Problem" Of Prostitution With Specialized Criminal Courts, Mae C. Quinn Jan 2006

Revisiting Anna Moscowitz's Kross's Critique Of New York City's Women's Court: The Continued Problem Of Solving The "Problem" Of Prostitution With Specialized Criminal Courts, Mae C. Quinn

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article explores New York City's non-traditional, judicially based response to prostitution. This article first recounts the history of New York City’s Women’s Court. It then examines the work of the Midtown Community Court, the “problem-solving court” established in 1993 to address criminal issues, like prostitution, in Midtown Manhattan. It also discusses the renewed concerns about sex work in New York and describe the movement, propelled by modern reformers, to address prostitution through specialty courts. It then contrasts the shared features and attributes of the Women’s Court and Midtown Court models. Finally, the article urges modern reformers to step back …


No Penis, No Problem, Kay L. Levine Jan 2006

No Penis, No Problem, Kay L. Levine

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Over the past century and a half, the gendered essence of statutory rape has become deeply embedded in the purpose of the statute, extending its tentacles far beyond the statutory language, such that we can no longer extricate the male-on-female image from the formal law's requirements for prosecution. The reality of statutory rape is, however, far more complex than the traditional gender construct implies. Female sex abusers and male victims exist, in substantial numbers and varieties. Part I documents the statutory rape law's gendered essence, explaining the formal law's traditional gendered classification scheme, the Supreme Court's approval of that approach, …


Lessons Unlearned: Women Offenders, The Ethics Of Care, And The Promise Of Restorative Justice, Marie A. Failinger Jan 2006

Lessons Unlearned: Women Offenders, The Ethics Of Care, And The Promise Of Restorative Justice, Marie A. Failinger

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This article focuses on the reality that women's relationality, and particularly their relationships with men in their lives, profoundly affects the behavior that lands them in the criminal justice system. The author argues that restorative justice, which is essentially grounded on an ethical understanding of crime and treats the offender an as interacting subject/agent, is a necessary avenue of response to most women offenders' crimes, and that corrections must go beyond a psychological approach that treats crimes as a form of illness, or a systematic model which attempts primarily to rectify deficits in women's social situation.


Rare & Inconsistent: The Death Penalty For Women, Victor L. Streib Jan 2006

Rare & Inconsistent: The Death Penalty For Women, Victor L. Streib

Fordham Urban Law Journal

Previous studies of the national landscape around the death penalty for women have identified and analyzed past themes and issues.22 This Article brings the analysis current through 2005, beginning with a reprise of the conversations about gender bias and disparity in the death penalty system. It appears that female offenders have always been treated differently from male offenders in the death penalty system, sometimes for reasons that are easily justifiable but too often simply because of sex bias. The next section of this Article explores the current death penalty era, identifying those women who have been sentenced to death, those …